The post titled “Most experts believe COVID-19 was probably not a lab leak” is on the frontpage yet this post while being newer and having more karma is not. Looking into it, it’s because this post does not have the frontpage tag: it is a personal blogpost.
Personal Blogposts are posts that don’t fit LessWrong’s Frontpage Guidelines. They get less visibility by default. The frontpage guidelines are:
Timelessness. Will people still care about this in 5 years?
Avoid political topics. They’re important to discuss sometimes, but we try to avoid it on LessWrong.
General Appeal. Is this a niche post that only a small fraction of users will care about?
I don’t see how this post doesn’t meet those three while the other post does, given they are about the exact same topic, so either Roko disallowed this post to appear on the frontpage or we should expect the frontpage to be curated to be more conforming to mainstream viewpoints (and in that case imo that should also be explicit in the frontpage guidelines)
Mod here: most of the team were away over the weekend so we just didn’t get around to processing this for personal vs frontpage yet. (All posts start as personal until approved to frontpage.) About to make a decision in this morning’s moderation review session, as we do for all other new posts.
FYI: I think it’s entirely reasonable to leave this post as a personal blogpost if the LW mod team feel that it is too “spicy” to associate with the LW brand.
If in a few years it turns out that the thesis here is proven correct one can discuss how to handle controversial but plausibly true posts.
I can come up with justifications for any one of these, but I’ve found no way to make them consistent. The Informal Study post (frontpage) directly fed into the Niacin post (personal), so they either should rise and fall as a unit, or the Informal Study post should be penalized for lack of importance and be the one to stay in personal. Long Covid Risks (frontpage) expires far faster than the Niacin or Bazant Calculator posts (personal)). Bazant Calculator (personal) was strictly more useful and timeless than the request for input on microcovid (frontpage). I Caught Covid… staying on personal is a 100% reasonable call, but other case studies of mine have been frontpaged.
I think inconsistency around covid posts is a mix of changing policy (because covid had an exception to timeless requirements for a while, and importance became a factor for all frontpaging when it hadn’t been before), and variation between team members. I find it frustrating, but AFAICT it’s not sinister. I’m technically a mod. I do almost no modding but am in the slack and can be sure my complaints will be heard, and they can’t even stay consistent with my posts.
For COVID in-particular we added a specific threshold that is “yes, this is news based, but important enough that we will frontpage the most important posts in this category anyways”. I think we announced it somewhere, let me look it up…
I think that explains some but not all of the sorting (e.g. the niacin post was partially about long covid, and similar posts about the flu should be and previously have been approved).
I think this is probably not worth the effort to fix, which is why I didn’t push back. But I do think it’s worth making common knowledge of the inconsistency of the sorting process.
Oh, yeah, I totally think what happened here is “we had more rules/guidelines about COVID, which increased the complexity of the rules we had to follow, which caused us to be more inconsistent in applying those rules”. I didn’t mean to imply that we actually flawlessly followed the rules.
The post titled “Most experts believe COVID-19 was probably not a lab leak” is on the frontpage yet this post while being newer and having more karma is not. Looking into it, it’s because this post does not have the frontpage tag: it is a personal blogpost.
I don’t see how this post doesn’t meet those three while the other post does, given they are about the exact same topic, so either Roko disallowed this post to appear on the frontpage or we should expect the frontpage to be curated to be more conforming to mainstream viewpoints (and in that case imo that should also be explicit in the frontpage guidelines)
Mod here: most of the team were away over the weekend so we just didn’t get around to processing this for personal vs frontpage yet. (All posts start as personal until approved to frontpage.) About to make a decision in this morning’s moderation review session, as we do for all other new posts.
FYI: I think it’s entirely reasonable to leave this post as a personal blogpost if the LW mod team feel that it is too “spicy” to associate with the LW brand.
If in a few years it turns out that the thesis here is proven correct one can discuss how to handle controversial but plausibly true posts.
I see, I didn’t consider that. Sorry.
LessWrong has been very inconsistent about covid in particular. Just of my own posts:
Nitric oxide for covid and other viral infections (frontpage)
Long Covid Risks: 2023 Update (frontpage)
Home Antigen Tests Aren’t Useful For Covid Screening (personal)
I Caught Covid And All I Got Was This Lousy Ambiguous Data (personal)
Bazant: An alternate covid calculator (personal)
What would you like from Microcovid.org? How valuable would it be to you? (frontpage)
Long Covid Informal Study Results (frontpage)
Niacin as a treatment for covid? (Probably no, but I’m glad we’re checking) (personal)
The remaining two may be from the period where even highly topical covid posts were frontpaged, due to importance, I forget when that kicked in.
Long Covid Is Not Necessarily Your Biggest Problem (frontpage)
Exercise Trade Offs [with covid risk] (front page)
I can come up with justifications for any one of these, but I’ve found no way to make them consistent. The Informal Study post (frontpage) directly fed into the Niacin post (personal), so they either should rise and fall as a unit, or the Informal Study post should be penalized for lack of importance and be the one to stay in personal. Long Covid Risks (frontpage) expires far faster than the Niacin or Bazant Calculator posts (personal)). Bazant Calculator (personal) was strictly more useful and timeless than the request for input on microcovid (frontpage). I Caught Covid… staying on personal is a 100% reasonable call, but other case studies of mine have been frontpaged.
I think inconsistency around covid posts is a mix of changing policy (because covid had an exception to timeless requirements for a while, and importance became a factor for all frontpaging when it hadn’t been before), and variation between team members. I find it frustrating, but AFAICT it’s not sinister. I’m technically a mod. I do almost no modding but am in the slack and can be sure my complaints will be heard, and they can’t even stay consistent with my posts.
For COVID in-particular we added a specific threshold that is “yes, this is news based, but important enough that we will frontpage the most important posts in this category anyways”. I think we announced it somewhere, let me look it up…
Here is the comment where we announced we would no longer frontpage Zvi’s COVID updates: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EzcZ82QbTcB3Bn7JB/covid-3-17-22-the-rise-of-ba-2?commentId=mjn3uc9rPEzP3fEr9
Here is where Ruby writes about “Long COVID” posts being frontpage: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6uwLq8kofo4Tzxfe2/long-covid-is-not-necessarily-your-biggest-problem?commentId=LY3aKxbeC6P9DpXBT
I feel like I remember a comment or post where we stated publicly we would start frontpaging some COVID stuff, but I can’t find it quickly.
In any case, in the domain of COVID the frontpage/personal stuff is particularly confusing.
I think that explains some but not all of the sorting (e.g. the niacin post was partially about long covid, and similar posts about the flu should be and previously have been approved).
I think this is probably not worth the effort to fix, which is why I didn’t push back. But I do think it’s worth making common knowledge of the inconsistency of the sorting process.
Oh, yeah, I totally think what happened here is “we had more rules/guidelines about COVID, which increased the complexity of the rules we had to follow, which caused us to be more inconsistent in applying those rules”. I didn’t mean to imply that we actually flawlessly followed the rules.
I believe that that is the case and may be appropriate for LW